His smug face tells me he knows perfectly well we haven’t had any luck.
“So, Tony,” I say.
“Yeah, kid?” He looks down at me indulgently.
“We need to get into the chief’s office, and you’re standing in our way.”
“Yeah?” He looks at me blankly.
“And as far as I can tell, you’re trying to hit on Bella and she has absolutely zero interest in ever going out with you, except you won’t absorb that when she says it to you nicely because you absolutely cannot conceive that a woman would not want to date you. So since she’s being too nice right now, let me clear things up for you. Bella doesn’t want to date you. She doesn’t even want to talk to you. She’s never going to dinner with you, and the fact that you persist is harassment.” At this he blanches. “So get. Out. Of. Our. Way.”
“You know what?” he says, taking several steps back. “I was trying to be nice, but the two of you are a joke. You’re never going to get anything done, and watching the two of you try to be taken seriously is pathetic.”
“Thanks for your assessment of our abilities, Tony. Really insightful,” Bella says brightly, then yanks on my sleeve and pulls me into the corner by our abandoned desks. “Thanks for that.” She sniffs and raises her nose into the air imperiously. “Now, come on, enough dawdling. We need to be careful and considerate about how we approach the chief. She commands respect and she’s not going to respond well if we barge into her office and—”
“Bella,” I say, blood still pumping hard with the effort of not attacking Tony full throttle. “I don’t have time to talk right now. I need to find Ursula. I need the chief to approve more resources. I need her to understand there’s something bigger than just one person going missing or running away in the Scar.”
“Okay,” Bella says. “All I’m saying is that we should make a plan.”
“There’s no time for plans,” I say, and push past her to open the door to the chief’s office.
I burst in as she’s meeting with two guys I recognize as senior detectives but don’t personally know. She looks brighter than she did the other night. Less tired, but not at all pleased by the interruption.
“Yes?” she says.
“Oh goodness, no.” Mona comes out from behind her desk and tries to shoo us from the room.
“I just need to talk to you for one minute,” I say.
“I am in a meeting and everyone only needs to talk to me for one minute. You can wait your turn.”
“I can’t.” I force my way past Mona.
The chief presses her lips together. Before she can kick me out I say, “My best friend’s gone. She goes to Monarch, too. Her name’s Ursula. She’s got a sick mom and a little sister who depend on her and now she’s missing. She can’t be missing, you understand?”
“Mary,” Bella says in a warning voice from beside me. I can barely hear her. I can’t register her words. All I can see or feel is that Ursula isn’t where she’s supposed to be and that means she’s not okay. What if she’s being hurt? What if someone is torturing her?
“We need more resources,” I say. “Put more officers in the Scar. Have them go door-to-door. There are so many places she and Mally could be—”
The chief puts up her hand, signals the detectives to leave. My chest is heaving.
“Miss Heart, are you giving me orders?”
“I’m just saying my friend deserves as much attention as Mally Saint. Just because Mally’s rich doesn’t mean she should get all the focus while Ursula just vanishes and no one does a thing!”
Bella pinches me lightly and it’s just enough to slow me down and help me get hold of my breath. “No, ma’am,” Bella says. “Mary Elizabeth was definitely not giving you orders, ma’am. She is making a request. She’s just a little overwrought today.”
Mona closes the door so we’re enclosed in her office once again. Only now does it truly sink in how out of my depth I am.
“That’s very good to hear, Officer Loyola, because you know how much I do not appreciate taking orders.”
“She doesn’t like it at all,” Mona says.
“So, now, Miss Heart, if you would please take a moment to gather yourself, you may start from the beginning.”
“Stay in your lane,” Bella says, nearly inaudibly.
“I believe there is a serial kidnapper in the Scar,” I begin. “My best friend, Ursula, has been missing since last night. She lives in the same neighborhood as Mally Saint. They are the same age and both attend Monarch High.”
“Is that all?” the chief says, looking even more irritated than she did a few minutes ago.
“Well…”
“So if I’m understanding correctly—and please excuse any confusion as I was having a strategy meeting regarding the organized crime ring that’s taking over Monarch right now—you’d like me to put my best officers on finding a friend who didn’t call home when I’m close to cracking the Mad Hatter case and need all hands on deck for that.”
“But—”
“And you’d like me to do this on a good-faith hunch that your friend has been kidnapped, who I’m certain is of unimpeachable character and who has been missing since what time?”
“Midnight,” I say, seeing all the holes in my theory as they must appear to her.
“Midnight,” she repeats. “Not even twenty-four hours. So, to recap, you’d like me to redistribute my resources as police chief to look for a girl who’s probably not missing at all.”
I can’t answer. I know I’m right, but I also know there’s no way for me to convince the chief. She sighs. “Mary Elizabeth, I understand your stress levels are high. I can even understand how you might make some misguided connection between your friend and Mally Saint, but I’m sure she’ll be home safe and sound before you can make it back to the Scar.”
I wish that were true, but I know it’s not, and the chief’s certainty, counter to mine, is dangerous. I don’t know what I had expected; maybe that the chief and I were somehow so interwoven by fate and our mutual experience of life in the Scar and loss and her involvement in solving my parents’ death that she would see me as something beyond the less-than-rookie I am. I am foolish, and I feel it in every nerve. I am foolish, but I am also right, and I can’t let Ursula pay the price for the stupidity with which I approached the chief.
“Please just let me look for her,” I say.
The chief gazes at me unflinchingly.
“Please let me investigate whether or not there’s a connection…if she’s not there when I get back to the Scar. I would be so grateful to you…again.”
For a moment I see something human appear on her face, but it disappears as quickly as it came. “Unfortunately, I can’t allow you to become involved in a case that close to you. It’s a conflict of interest and a waste of taxpayer funds.”
Now would probably be a bad time to remind her that my internship is unpaid.
“Your energy needs to remain on the primary objective of finding Mally Saint. Please tell your friend’s mother to go through the appropriate channels and file a police report if she hasn’t come back once the twenty-four hours is at its end. And I’d like you to schedule a meeting with Dr. Tink. She can determine whether you’re stable enough to continue working on this case.”
Great. My entire life depends on my extremely quirky therapist assessing me properly. The thing is, I am stable enough to handle this. I need to find Ursula. I don’t care what the chief says.
“Yes, ma’am.”
She looks me over, like she can hear the lie in my voice, but I don’t let my facial expression change at all.
“And one more thing, Miss Heart.”
“Ma’am?”
“If you ever burst into my office again uninvited or have the audacity to speak to me in that tone of voice again, I will have you tossed out of the building and you will never be allowed through its doors again. Are we understood?”
“Yes, ma’am,” I say. But I’m thinking, You
can say whatever you want and I’m going to do whatever I want and that’s how it’s going to be. I’m feeling something new bubbling up to the surface, and I don’t even know if I’m ready to look at it, but right then I don’t like the chief at all, and there’s this little voice inside me that’s saying I don’t even know who I am if I’m not the Mary Elizabeth Heart who worships Chief Ito.
She turns to Bella, eyes all warning black glitter. “Officer Loyola, keep her on a leash. I’ll need reports on your progress by Monday morning, so have a productive rest of your week.”
“Ma’am,” we say in unison.
When we leave the chief’s office, Bella rubs my back and I shake her off. “Please don’t,” I say.
I’m still furious with myself for losing my composure like that, and so upset I blew my chance to figure out what’s happened to Ursula.
“I just have to file the reports for today and I can come help you look for her. We’ll find her…together.” Bella goes over to her desk and sits down, opening her laptop and taking out her notes. She looks at me and smiles a little worriedly, then goes back to her screen.
I don’t say good-bye to her, just slip out as soon as she’s immersed in what she’s doing.
And with that, I’m free. I run to the train, leaving Bella and Midcity behind. I know this internship is the path to the things I want, but these people aren’t going to help me now, and I don’t want Bella involved in this piece of my life.
I need to get to James and find my best friend.
THE NIGHT IS FRUITLESS. I CALL URSULA’S PHONE again and again, just to hear the sound of her voice.
If you don’t have anything interesting to say, don’t say anything at all. If you do, fascinate me after the tone.
James and I go to Wonderland and we sit there for hours, waiting for Ursula because we don’t know what else to do. I can’t bear the thought of going to her house, we’ve already been all over her neighborhood, and James has ears to the ground everywhere. He deals with it by playing pool, aggressively smashing the balls into each other so hard I think they’re going to come apart. We both watch the door every time it opens, hoping it will be Ursula. I’d take her dirty and wounded and even starved and thirsty if she would just come through that door.
Smee and the rest of James’s boys spend all night patrolling for Ursula. James even lets them take his car, and after Wonderland is closed we walk for hours, checking every corner and alley, James stopping to ask everyone on the street. The Scar is the same as always: balmy, palm trees swaying above us, people in tanks and short skirts and high heels, dead magic all around us. We get home so late Gia is already almost done with her business day. James sits with her awhile. I keep looking to the couch where Ursula was asleep just yesterday. I should have held her there. I should have paid more attention. I don’t even remember our last conversation. Something about spice cake, I think, but I don’t know. I was so excited about the Mally case I have no idea what was going on with her.
I’ve been a bad friend and a bad person, selfish beyond reason. I’ve taken everything I have for granted and now it’s being taken away. I keep wanting to tell Ursula about how Ursula is missing. I don’t know if I can survive this.
Finally I go to the couch and lay my head just where she had hers, hoping something of her essence will slip into me, tell me where she is. I can’t stop thinking about all the bad things that could be happening to her right now. James sinks down next to me, pulls me into his chest, and after a while I fall asleep holding him so tightly I’m surprised he can breathe at all. I don’t want to take anything for granted ever again, and I hope if I hold on to James tight enough, he won’t disappear, too.
By the next morning, when I’m in Dr. Tink’s chair because I have no idea what else to do, I’m thinking there’s a chance I’m losing it.
I try to focus on Dr. Tink, who sits across from me in a brown recliner, which has the effect of making her look like a plant. She has cropped blond hair and small features on a heart-shaped face, and is in a fitted jacket and tight army-green pants. She’s bouncing her leg over her knee, waiting for me to answer something, but I don’t know what it is. I do know in order to appear sane I should be more enthusiastic and as engaged as possible.
“Mary Elizabeth.”
“Yes?”
“I know you haven’t slept properly—”
“I have.” The heat rises through me. “I’m sleeping literally all the time and you have no idea and you just think because I have a couple of measly circles under my eyes—”
Dr. Tink cuts me off. “Anger is a defense mechanism, Mary Elizabeth. I have the records from the health app on your phone. You’re running on a total of ten hours in the last three nights, only one and a half of those in the last twenty-four hours.”
I forgot she had that information. I slump back in my seat waiting for whatever lecture she’s about to give me. We’ve been meeting once a week for the last two months since I got this internship, and even though it’s mostly supposed to be just supportive in case I run into stressful situations here at the station, she keeps pushing me to talk about my past, like she’s convinced it’s the key to something.
“Have you given any more consideration to what we talked about last time?” she says.
Last time was another lifetime ago, and I can’t remember.
“About?”
“About your family? Have you given any thought to whether you’re ready to talk about what happened that day?”
“I mean…I’m sorry, but what does that have to do with anything?” I say. “Everyone loses people.” I don’t know why she would make out my circumstances as especially traumatic. She’s Legacy, and everyone knows she lost a brother in the Fall.
She looks up at me as though startled, a flash of pain splitting through her cheerful veneer. Then she recalibrates. “Mary Elizabeth, it may be so that you don’t think it matters, but it’s also true that if you don’t begin to connect to your own experiences, they will continue to control you, because whether you know it or not, that’s what’s happening. You are a series of reactions. Wouldn’t you like to be more in control of the things that happen to you?”
I scoff. “Why would I hope for that when it’s an impossibility? Things happen. They happen to us and we have to take it. Things are given and things are taken away and all we can do is get really good at riding the storm. So, yes, I’m reacting because life is happening and there’s nothing else I can do.”
Dr. Tink looks lost in that brown chair right now, like it’s eating her up. “I think you don’t want to revisit that pain.”
I lean forward. “I revisit it all the time. It’s with me constantly.” My voice cracks as I finish my sentence and I swallow it back.
Tink lets the air grow heavy between us, waiting for me to speak. When I don’t, she says, “I’m going to recommend a leave of absence from your internship. I don’t think it’s good for you right now. You need some rest, some self-care.”
“No, no, please don’t!” I make myself sit upright and focus on her words. “You don’t understand.” Then I get it. I have to do what she says or let this dream of being a detective go right now, and while I currently hate the chief and feel like I’m useless in almost every way, if I storm out of here, I’ll regret it in the morning. “Okay,” I say. “I will tell you what happened, even though I don’t think it’s going to help or make any difference at all.”
“Okay, Mary Elizabeth,” Tink says. “When you’re ready.”
I close my eyes. I remember my mother. She was in a bad mood and she was wearing red. Her hand felt cool against mine.
“Good,” Dr. Tink says. “Now, tell me.”
I don’t open my eyes because I don’t want to. If I do, I’ll lose this image of my mother, the feeling of the day on my skin. I can’t remember ever being this close to the memory, which has always felt far away and distorted. But now it’s right here. It’s the blue light, something whispers. It’s brought you so much c
loser to yourself.
“My mother was mad, or at least annoyed. She was wearing a red sundress with little white hearts on it.”
“Why was she mad?”
“Because my dad was sick and so was Mirana and she had stuff to do. She wasn’t going to be able to do it because she was going to have to spend all day taking care of them. We held hands. She walked me to school and the whole time she was saying how she was glad I wasn’t sick yet but I would probably be very soon and so her whole week would be ruined.”
“Do you remember anything else about walking to school?”
“Just that the sun was shining and all the clouds were shaped like cookies.”
“And then?”
“She kneeled down and rubbed the top of my head and her eyes were so blue and her hair was so red and the hearts on her dress seemed like they were dancing.” I remember something. “Dancing. We learned how to square-dance that day. Do-si-do.”
“Everyone has to endure that at some point,” Dr. Tink says.
“And then the police came.”
“Okay.”
“They came and got me and took me to the station. They didn’t tell me what was happening for a long time, so I just watched everyone answering phones and typing into computers and rushing around. Then a detective came and sat next to me. I remember she smelled good. She took me into a room and she told me. She said my aunt was coming to get me and I would be going home with her.”
“What else did she tell you, Mary?”
I shudder. Something oozy and long dormant is trying to push its way out of my mouth. It tastes metallic.
“She told me…” I can feel my body trembling. I remember being in that room with so much white, a TV monitor hung in one corner, a mirror along the breadth of a wall. “She told me my family had been killed, that some bad person had gone into our apartment and found my dad and Mirana sick in bed and he had killed them and then my mom, and then he had left. And I was thinking it was so strange I had been learning how to square-dance while someone had been killing my family.”
“Go deeper. How were you feeling?”
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